Up Bear Creek / 12may50011

Why process is important even if

it takes longer than first planned

PLP … For years the Public Land Partnership has been the regional table of trust for local citizens from varying stakeholder groups concerned about the management of the Grand Mesa, Uncompahgre and Gunnison Forests. People from San Miguel, Ouray, Montrose and Delta counties would come together monthly to talk about important issues with elected officials, ranchers, miners, motorized recreationalists, enviros, state and federal agency folks and any interested citizens … In the past, PLP was an incubator of ideas that turned into projects – some of them winning national awards. Of late, the crowds have been smaller, but the discussions continue to tackle divisive and important issues … Folks last week were just getting their hands around the Forest Service’s new Planning Rule proposal from different perspectives – not just what our friends were saying, but from those with very different agendas ... I got an earful in DC this past March from high-level Forest Service staff about what was intended with the changes in the planning rule process -- of how the Forest Service wants to operate in making plans to manage public forests. And I attended a National Planning session in DC with rollout explanations by various Forest Service officials and Q&As after each talk. I was impressed with the focus on collaboration with local governments built into the new rule … Coming home I learned from Commissioner Joan May and some of my enviro friends that there was widespread ecological concern that the rules were too vague and didn’t have specific standards embedded in the draft language, to ensure protection for ecosystem values… And at a PLP meeting in April, I heard from my industry friends that given all the new emphasis on establishing species viability (as directed by the court in tossing out the previous planning rule revisions in 2005 and 2008) and extending special protections, it would appear that the Forest Service would have even less capacity than the insufficient job they were currently doing protecting forest health from wildfire and beetle threats, providing for a viable timber industry (particularly in our Western states), and balancing all these new mandated levels of planning with declining budgets … I was just beginning to assimilate all those various perspectives and working to try and find a balance point that would best address all those concerns while moving the Forest Service proposal forward. I’d started private conversations with enviros and industry folks. We were drafting letters and starting to share issues. But like so many processes, when government is involved, it takes at least twice as long as you think to get a good representative cross-section of the citizenry educated and involved. A 90-day May 16^th deadline was rapidly approaching and even I, directly involved in public land management on national, state and local levels, had just begun to assimilate and start to sort through, not just the data and documents, but the varied perspectives and issues of the many stakeholder groups affected. A number of entities and individuals asked for an extension of the new Planning Rule comment deadline (including San Miguel County) – to give us the time needed to wrestle with a very important change in the way the Forest Service operates. But the Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell denied the request for an extension … It’s a shame. The Forest Service wants to collaborate. But when you take the time to really learn the issue, read the voluminous documents (draft rules, explanations, environmental impact statement), and start to form coalitions to address the issues from all sides, the Forest Service shifts from partner to police. Sorry. Time’s up. Enough public comment. It took us over a year to write up the new rules, but now you only get three months to review and comment … It’s unfortunate. Instead of giving citizens a chance to make meaningful comment, the Forest Service is pushing ahead with the direction they clearly want to go, more than they care how the public fares moving along in high speed turtle style … The Forest Service may be a disappointment, but you should consider coming to the June 2 Public Lands Partnership’s annual meeting in Montrose’s Friendship Hall (over behind the Coffee Trader). Our regional group will be looking to the future, and how PLP can help stimulate discussion among diverse constituents to find common solutions to public lands issues in our backyard.

SCHOOLING … For those of us critical of public schools (in spite of all the good they do), it’s amazing to see that two of the children, for whom concerned parents created our own private schools in Norwood and Ridgway, have gone on to graduate summa cum laude at Ft. Lewis College in Durango – Ruby Siegel and Rio Coyotl … For me it validates the worth of doing more for one’s children then simply trundling them off into a deeply flawed public school system. Worth the money (paying private tuition as well as public taxes), worth the time, worth the effort.

SAWPIT SHEEP… Ah, sometimes email communication doesn’t save newspapers from mistakes. I sent a correction into the Watch after doing some further investigation about the critters at Sawpit. While they looked like Mountain Goats – short horns, white bodies – they were actually a herd of Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis). Goats have pure white bodies, not the brownish white of sheep. However, somehow the correction didn’t make it into print … I also sent in a correction that only two of Ouray County commissioners couldn’t attend the annual CCI meet in Vail – but somehow the wrong info still got into print … We make every effort at accuracy, whether columnist or reporter, but sometimes systems fail us … I got a comment on the sheep/goat mistake on line, and when I tried to reply, the website wouldn’t accept my password … Some weeks are like that.

THE TALKING GOURD

Oops, You Lose

          -for Michael

I walk a mile

out the Orvis front door

before I realize

whose shoes are whose

after your unclosed eyes

watched, half-dressed

as I laced up the wrong boots

& chatted you goodbye

Up Bear Creek / 21apr50011

Reassessing Nuclear Power’s Risks

RISK … Every human is a great evaluator of risk. Throughout our lives we make judgment about what can hurt us, what could kill. So, I’m not so sure we should look to others to assess our own personal risk in continuing down the nuclear road. Or the risk to our loved ones ... You don’t have to read the Wall St. Journal or listen to Fox News to know it would likely be unwise to look to the leaders of our capital-driven, growth-obsessed, industrial materialist society for a fair risk assessment … Citizens, when it comes to assessing the risks of nuclear power, I think we are called upon to consider the kind of radical action that Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin modeled for America – to start thinking for ourselves. To weigh as individuals what our risks are. With nuclear, and without … Otherwise, you may as well “Leave it to Beaver” as effectively as any industrial expert paid to convince you everything’s hunky-dory. Radionuclide’s are harmless. Radon is good for your lungs … Time to realize that all those too familiar “expert” nostrums --“state of the art”, “best available science”, “as low as reasonably achievable” (ALARA), or “practicable” (ALARP), or “cost effective,” etc. – for what they really are: educated guesses with incomplete data … Should we really risk $300 billion+ in damages and hundreds of American miles cordoned off from human contact for thousands of years to pay less on our monthly electrical bills? … Forget the “experts.” What does common sense tell you? Is the benefit worth the risk?

WRONG … Just my luck to have based a lot of historical research on a rare publication that appears to have been rife with errors … In 2004 Dr. Andrew Gulliford published my historical essay “Mining the Gold: Telluride and San Juan History” in his book, San Juan Sampler: Selections from the Nita Heald Webber Southwest Postcard Collection (Durango Herald Small Press). One of the primary sources I used to do research for the historical section was Ray L. Newburn, Jr.’s Postal History of the Colorado San Juan. It was a book none of the regional libraries or bookstores had a copy of – more manuscript than tome -- and it had been generously loaned to me by Buzz and Jean Zatterstrom of Nucla … Buzz was fascinated with postage stamps (as am I) and had secured a copy of Newburn’s monograph (along with a postmarked envelope he showed me from Cameville – a long-vanished post office townsite at the juncture of Tabeguache Creek and the San Miguel, just upstream from Uravan) … Thinking (as many amateurs do) that my single rare historical source could give me literary advantage – mining, as it were, the gold of found information, I rushed ahead without checking sources and cross-referencing what I had. Alas, my own hubris caught up with me … In his book, Newburn cites the name “Rio del Cado” as the appellation first given to Leopard Creek by the Dominguez y Escalante expedition of 1776 (the good padres were seeking a route to Monterey from Santa Fe, while ancestors on my mother’s side – the Santa Cruz family – were just arriving in Monterey from Mexico -- at about the same time). Newburn translates it as “River of the Elbow” (I think a better translation might be “Bent Creek” or “Crooked Watercourse”) … Nevertheless, I wrote up my little history and cited Newburn for my Leopard Creek story. Then, I got an email from former Tellurider and Colombian-American friend Lito Tejada-Flores a couple months ago and things started to go south. Somehow, in one of our exchanges, “Rio del Cado” came up and Lito replied curiously that “Rio del Codo” meant “Bent Creek” but Rio del Cado was a much more obscure word, literally “rabbit burrow” but really slang for “a hideout of crooks.” I was intrigued. Maybe Butch Cassidy was just the latest in a long line of outlaw denizens of Dallas Divide … That tantalizing theory collapsed, however, when I conferred with local historical sage Dirk de Pagter – whose collection of ancient maps of this region is legendary. “I think ‘Rio del Cado’ must have been a spelling mistake by Mr. Newburn,” wrote de Pagter, “because it is the only time it was called by this name. Hayden [earliest government surveyor of this region] first referred to it as ‘Rio del Codo’ in 1874-1877 and this name was used by many cartographers like Louis Nell who copied Hayden’s information. But, after the initial gold/silver rush, by 1886-1887 the name was changed to Leopard Creek. I cannot find any reference before Hayden” … So, not from Dominguez y Escalante. Not “Cado” at all … One more revisionist footnote to the comprehensive history of San Miguel County that’s yet to be written.

AND OOPS … Mea culpa, dear readers. Win an award & you start making mistakes all over the place. My only excuse: writing under deadline in the wee hours can carry one into strange corners that even copy editors don’t check … We are NOT on the cusp of the 21^st Millennium of the Christian Era, as I asserted quite falsely last week. We HAVE entered the 21^st Century of the Christian Era, but only the 3^rd Millennium … Thanks to my old sem buddy Gary Saso of Cupertino for putting me straight after my flagrant off-course boo-boo.

GREGORY GREYHAWK … Another bright star flames out … One of those giant souls, huge-hearted, a string of his own hockey teeth pearled around his neck. Brilliant, erratic. I loved being around him. Anything could happen, and sometimes did …. Just ordered his book, Wailing Heaven, Whistling in Hell (Howling Dog Press, Berthoud, Colorado, 1996) … Gonna miss the wrap of his big arm as we caromed down a Denver sidewalk, and the wild grin of his gap-toothed smile.

THE TALKING GOURD

Remembering Karen Chamberlain

lanky stalk of grass

singing in the autumn wind

your voice packed with seeds

-Carol Bell

Fort Collins

Up Bear Creek / 14apr50011

Looking Back on Vatican II

CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-MONK … The dawn of the 3rd Millennium of the Christian Era has not showered its graces upon the Byzantine stained glass of Roman Catholicism. Revelations of widespread sexual abuse among deviant members of the Roman Catholic clergy have rocked the faithful and non-believers alike. Bishops and Cardinals have been touched by the smoldering, decades-old scandal (even, some claim, the Pope). Not for any predatory sexual behavior themselves, but for allowing ordained predators to continue in the priesthood – instead of shutting the offenders up in mandatory seclusion. Or sending them off into the world, excommunicated. Or (God forbid)  turning them over to the civil authorities … As a young man I had such hope for religion. I was a believer. Even with the allure of Fifties Rock & Roll parties and Eighth Grade first dates, I decided at 14 to dedicate my life to making this a better world with a better life for all. Which, in my young mind, translated into entering a diocesan seminary south of San Francisco (Colorado Supreme Court Justice Greg Hobbs was just a class ahead of me there). My intent was clear – I would help convert the world into believers in the gospels of the RC Christ ... Of course, the deeper I got in my studies, the more my goal morphed. We aspiring clerical Turks wanted to get rid of the old Latin Mass. Bring the ritual into English, so all could participate. And understand. Ours was an American kind of Catholicism, imbued with Jeffersonian principles and Catholic Worker tendencies. Many spiritual greenhorns like myself embraced the near heretical writings on the Omega Point by Jesuit philosopher-paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, as well as the complete oeuvre of Trappist poet, pacifist and celebrity monk Thomas Merton, who pioneered interfaith dialogue among East and West religious traditions and bridged the spiritual chasm between modern literature and contemplative life (Cables from the Ace, New Directions, 1968) … But the retrenchment of the Roman Curia once Blessed John the XXIII (Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli) died and my own wrestling with existential phenomenology (and a looming vow of celibacy) led me out of St. Patrick’s Seminary and off to Montana and the land of the Absaroka (but that’s another tale) … All of this to say I have a confession to make. I’m addicted. Every spring, as my mail box fills up with lurid photos of the most beautiful creatures, I have come to accept that I am addicted to the pornography of garden catalogues … Omygoddess, I could leaf through their Technicolor pages for hours. Entranced with the beauty of this bulb. Lusting to purchase that flowering annual. Pining for the rarest heirloom spud seed … And, honestly, I’m not a bit ashamed. When it comes to the sin of gardening, I’m completely unrepentant.

DICK BRETT … An old sem buddy of mine reporting from the interior of China sometime last week … “The weather is Chengdu gray here. Spring is not in the air … The Chinese just finished celebrating their tomb-sweeping three-day holiday where they remember their beloved dead. I was the only foreigner in Pingle, a 2300-year-old Chinese town, where human beings first used natural gas. I was surrounded with Chinese who have gotten a little bit bigger piece of their ever growing economic pie. The Chinese know how to relax with their family and friends, tea and beer by the river -- talking, playing cards or mahjong, and eating fresh, delicious food … The four hour trip back to the big city was worth it.”

WEEKLY QUOTA … In a letter to Nicaraguan poet and cultural minister Ernesto Cardenal, Thomas Merton wrote: "The world is full of great criminals with enormous power, and they are in a death struggle with each other. It is a huge gang battle, using well-meaning lawyers and policemen and clergymen as their front, controlling papers, means of communication, and enrolling everybody in their armies."

THE TALKING GOURD

April Aubade

When you finally

sleep with the

window open in

a century old

house, the itch

of April enters,

a highway breathes

through, trains woo

darkly westward. Come

morning, wood pecker

drills a hole

into your waking

mind. A pin

of light shines.

Air sucks your

closed door against

its frame, trying

to make a

path through you.

Wood knocks wood.

Your metal mechanism

clicks in its

lock, hinges almost

creak. Everything begs

a thin opening.

-Rachel Kellum

Brush

Up Bear Creek / 7apr50011

Stamets offers Experimental 

Mycosolution to Japan’s Nuclear Mess

MYCO-REMEDIATE JAPAN? … Shroomfest & Bioneer Psychonaut Paul Stamets is calling his rough-sketched proposal: The Nuclear Forest Recovery Zone <//coalitionforpositivechange.com/stamets-fallout-mycoremediation.pdf>. He wants to use hyper-accumulating mycorrhizal mushrooms like Gomphidius glutinosus and Laccaria amethystina to bio-accumulate the radioactive isotope Cesium 137. He’d use this opportunity to run continuing tests of other mycelial species for their radioactivity-absorbent qualities – research that’s in the process of expanding world-wide, as the medicinal properties of mushrooms continue to astound science. This would allow researchers to measure which fungi work best at cleaning up the radioactive isotopes released into the surrounding soils by the Fukushima core meltdowns. The contaminated shrooms would be harvested and incinerated, and the radioactive ash would be “further refined and the resulting concentrates vitrified (placed into glass)” or neutralized using whatever becomes the state-of-the-art long-term nuclear storage technology (still to be invented) … His paper recommends that the Japanese evacuate and fence off a large nuclear zone embracing the devastated fallout areas in the vicinity of the failed Fukushima reactors. He’d have the government assemble “a high-level, diversified remediation team including foresters, mycologists, nuclear and radiation experts, government officials and citizens.” Wood debris from the tsunami would be chipped and mulched into contaminated areas to a minimum depth of 12-24 inches. Native deciduous & conifer trees would be planted in the wood chip mulch inoculated with various radioactivity-concentrating species of fungi. Harvest would be done under hazmat protocols … “By sampling other mushroom-forming fungi for their selective ability to hyper-accumulate radioactivity,” explains Stamets, “We can learn a great deal while helping the ecosystem to recover” … The paper estimates it could take decades to remediation the zone, but the end result could be a forested national park to benefit future generations of Japanese. No analysis of cost accompanies the paper, but it does include a bibliography of ten scientific articles and books on fungal interactions with radiation, including Stamet’s own Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (Ten Speed, Berkeley, 2005).

THANK YOU … Town of Telluride for filling in the blanks in the macadam on the Spur in To-Hell-U-ride … I don’t mind bumping along to moundy slops of stop-gap playdough repairs in commuting into paradise, it’s the ravenous Tyrannosaurus potholes swallowing my tires that gets under my skin.

THE SIDEWALK PHILOSOPHER … Oh, I got scolded the other sunny day, walking down Colorado Ave., for everything Obama and the invidiousness of politicians who promise change, like they have to do to get elected, and then get changed -- usually by a lot more information and diverse opinion, although sometimes payola (our species is particularly adept at scamming a system) … The problem is, once elected, you have to govern, and governance means listening to everyone (public & staff) and finding the people’s balance in each contentious decision, regardless of one’s personal bias. Holding inflexibly to every promise is a terrible strategy for governance. One can hold inflexibly to values and goals, while compromising on particulars if one can’t get a majority of support or move one of the many complex power points in a democracy (tyrannies are much simpler)… I wish more people cared enough to scold me like that. Still, I wish we all had to scold each other a lot less.

PRICE-ANDERSON … That’s the secret back-end subsidy for nuclear power that began in the Atomic Fifties. It caps liability for private nuclear energy corporations at $12.2 billion in case of an unforeseen accident of some unexpected source. Any costs in excess of that amount are the responsibility of taxpayers … Sounds almost reasonable, eh? That’s a lot of cash … Guess again … Here’s Jeffrey St. Clair from Counterpunch last month about the costs of an American nuclear catastrophe: “An controlled pool fire and meltdown at Shearon Harris [nuclear reactor] would put more than two million residents of this rapidly growing section of North Carolina in extreme peril. A recent study by the Brookhaven Labs, not known to overstate nuclear risks, estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage.”

GREENWASH … It’s wonderful that Telluride has always been blessed by Socratic gadflies who won’t let us rest on our laurels. We’ve done a lot of things right (the valley floor) and a lot of things wrong (the airport) – although some would reverse those two -- and maybe our much-vaunted carbon footprint reductions are mostly hot air and rhetoric; and maybe our building code is clumsily regulatory and costly and doesn’t really address the problem; and maybe paper bags are worse than plastic (what about putting a charge on bags like they do in DC, and forcing people to use their own bags?) … Still, I don’t think we have to beat ourselves over the heads because we aren’t pure green. I can’t think of any place that is. But we ought to constantly be improving the green we’re tying to become, and start taking my esteemed fellow citizen Harold Wondsel’s criticisms to heart.

THE TALKING GOURD

Iraq War Demonstration

San Francisco, 2003

Carried by five blondes

the banner spans the street.

Across the top:

BLONDES FOR PEACE.

Marching the middle:

big, bright daisies.

The bottom line:

IT’S A NO BRAINER!

-Doc Dachter

Nevada City